The Dimirs
The Dimirs are a mother-son team of butchers operating out of a decaying homestead in the Transylvanian forest; though they apparently used to be a much larger family, they now consist only of the aging matriarch Olga and her mentally-handicapped son Silviu. Though they are technically questgivers, this is only because the player immediately decides that their butchering operations cannot be tolerated: though supposedly "poor farmers," the family have been unable to raise crops in the increasingly polluted soil and have no experience in agriculture anyway; their real vocations involves hunting, killing, butchering and eating supernatural creatures. Despite having no supernatural traits and almost no supporters outside their immediate family, the Dimirs have managed to prove a consistent threat to the magical creatures of the forest: though they have been able to cut down on local ghoul populations, they have also murdered hundreds of innocent fairies, blajini and fauns, justifying each murder with xenophobic rhetoric concerning "the lesser races." It is this savage behavior that makes the Dimirs almost unbearable to the locals - and to just about anyone else visiting their secluded farm. Even the Illuminati find them difficult to stomach. Abattoir Philosophy Having remained in the shadows ever since they began the operation, the history of the Dimirs remains unknown. Olga claims that their family have been butchering magical creatures for generations, and there is nothing to suggest that she is lying. However, the presence of an abandoned Red Hand bunker under their farmhouse suggests that they only moved to their current location in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is not known how the family became so depleted, though the hazards of their trade likely resulted in several casualties, especially given that the Dimirs are brazen enough to hunt werewolves; this is possibly the fate of Silviu's father, given that Olga's letters claim that he went out one day and never came back. Of course, Olga also mentions that he was infected with syphilis, indicating another cause of death altogether. More well-known is their philosophy, which Olga insists on voicing as loudly and angrily as possible: to the Dimirs, supernatural beings cannot be trusted or tolerated in any form; to the family, the magical world is populated exclusively by "lesser races" fit only to be exterminated before they can corrupt humanity. They make no differentiation between the harmless Blajini and the marauding ghoul tribes, capturing and murdering both. More disturbingly, they also enjoy the taste of these creatures, noting the "excellent stew" that can be made from the Fata Padurii; ghouls are the family's primary prey, with their forest abattoir being constantly festooned with freshly-made strings of ghoul sausage. The Dimirs do not appear to consider this behavior reprehensible or even unusual, becoming offended at even the faintest notion that they might be doing something criminal: after all, they claim, the victims of the hunt weren't human, so it "obviously" wasn't a crime. Grandiose and vain, they insist that they should be thanked for killing magical creatures, claiming that the safety of the human world depends entirely on their depredations and that local factions know it - hence the reason why they haven't been driven out of business by the Draculestii or the Big Three; in reality, it's more likely that these factions are too preoccupied with saving the world to bother with the Dimirs. In keeping with their self-image as righteous defenders of humanity, the Dimirs restrict their crimes to non-human victims: Olga is outraged to discover that their family has been suspected of kidnapping children, and Silviu refuses to attack the player on the grounds that "people are not for sausages" - though he doesn't sound very sure of this. However, along with these standards, they also demonstrate a prominent hypocritical streak: though they supposedly disparage relationships with supernatural entities of any kind, the current hunting plan relies on the help of a pet ghoul called Patches. The Family Olga The matriarch of the family and the brains behind the butchering operation, Olga dominates every aspect of life on the farm: though too old to perform the work for herself, she is never too far away from the abattoir, usually for the sake of keeping an eye on her son. Undoubtedly the more vocal of the two, she loudly proclaims the moral and practical necessity of butchering supernatural creatures, raging loudly at the "hypocrisy" of how the Dimirs are treated by human Secret Worlders, insisting that players cannot afford to do without them. It is under Olga's guidance that the farm has remained segregated from the rest of Bacas County despite the absence of the family patriarch: declaring the entire forest the property of the Dimirs, she dismisses any protests concerning their methods with proclamations of "outsiders do not understand." Rude and abusive at the best of times, Olga never has anything nice to say to anyone in any of her scenes: in her introductory scene alone, she slaps Silviu hard across the face for speaking out of turn, bombards the player with borderline-psychotic rants, and dismisses her son from the scene without so much a kindly word. She also proves somewhat delusional, at one point lambasting players for their rudeness in trespassing on the farm to "tell us that we are wrong in what we do" - an utter impossibility considering that players do not speak in any of the cutscenes. For good measure, players cannot even speak to Silviu, the "questgiver." The events of Issue #7 expands on this delusional aspect of her character: following up on a lead from the Draculesti, players investigate the farm and find a letter from Olga to her absent husband; over the course of this unsent note, she swings wildly between yearning for her "beloved husband," asking when he will be coming home, and angrily scrawling that she hates him. More disturbingly, she waxes rhapsodical on the sound of fairies being put through a meat grinder, comparing it to the sound of "tinkling bells" and insisting that her husband should be there "listening to the sweet music" with her. Silviu The muscle of the operation, the "questgiver" from which the players receive the Dimir missions, and definitely the more obviously insane of the two. The full range of Silviu's problems has not been entirely elaborated upon, but he appears to be suffering from an intellectual disability of some kind, exhibiting the mental age of a child and an insistence on calling Olga "Mami." Olga herself claims that this is due to Silviu's father being infected with syphilis at the time of conception, but the butcher's mannerisms suggest that this is only the tip of the iceberg: he also appears to be addicted to bloodshed, and can be found giggling to himself about how much he loves killing supernatural beings and making them into sausage; the opening cutscene to "The Cellar Door" begins with him kneeling on the floor, chanting in unsubtitled Romanian about how his fairy victims scream and cry while he butchers them into sausage. Silviu is immediately distinguished by his unusual appearance: eerily pale, with a face covered in boils, one eye completely blood-red and the other stark white, a hunched posture and a noticeable limp, he is not a pretty sight. No reason has yet emerged for these deformities, though they may have something to do with the many supernatural creatures he has fought and eaten over the years. Worryingly enough, he doesn't appear to have internalized the notion that "people are not for sausages," only remembering this important fact after several tense seconds of concentration. Nor does Olga, for all her insistence that the Dimirs have broken no laws, appear to have set any rules for Silviu regarding theft: inspection of his belongings reveals that Silviu has no qualms about stealing toys from local children, having purloined a wooden soldier from Thibor at the Draculesti camp some time ago. Rules against animal cruelty or control seem to have passed him by as well: quite apart from decorating the ghoul paddocks with severed pig heads, he also sees fit to give the tamed wolves the run of the property, even though some of them are quite clearly rabid and an active threat to everyone in the area. In fact, the one fact he seems to grasp without prompting is that supernatural creatures are "dirty." More disturbingly, it appears that Olga's abuse of Silviu may not have been restricted to its current form: In the mission "The Cellar Door," investigation of the bunker under the farm heavily implies that Silviu was brought up down here, learning the art of violence in the same holding cells as his potential victims. The Butchering Operation The Dimir's hunting and butchering tactics may vary and many of them remain unknown, but their method for bringing in ghouls - their most common prey - is presented in great detail in "A Necessary Evil." Directly behind the Dimir property, the land gives way to a series of mountains only climbable via a narrow pass known as Ghoul Gully: as the name implies, this area is infested with ghouls, specifically the members of the Cankermouth Tribe. Somehow, Silviu has been able to convince Patches, the Cankermouth chieftain, to provide him with expendable members of the tribe - though the name suggests that Patches might actually be Silviu's pet. One way or another, he brings the ghouls down from the Gully with the help of his "sheepdog" and provides them with large quantities of meat laced with tranquilizers. With the ghouls safely doped, Silviu can let them roam free among the ghoul paddocks, getting progressively fatter and more bewildered as time goes on - until Silviu carves them up with a chainsaw and feeds the gibbets into an industrial grinder to make sausage meat. However, emails at Zagan alpha state that ghoul flesh is extremely toxic: either the Dimirs have come up with a cooking process that removes the poisonous impurities from the meat, or the family have simply developed an immunity after generations of consumption (which might just explain the history of mental illness among them). However, over the course of the mission, the player destroys much of the apparatus behind this process, forcing the Dimirs to look for new methods. Other supernatural creatures are brought down in hunts: Silviu owns a massive pack of trained wolves, evidently strong and numerous enough to subdue fauns and other potent beings of the forest. Once captured, the livestock are kept in the holding cells under the farm until it is their time to be slaughtered. In the event that captive carnivores require fattening up, the Dimirs aren't above allowing them to feast on Blajini. Though players are unable to shut down the bunker entirely, they are able to release at least one faun prisoner from the cells. During Issue #11, a visit to Orochi Tower's Zagan alpha floor reveals that the Dimirs have recently been made a partner of the company's "Supernaturals As Consumables" program: essentially an initiative to test the edibility and marketability of magical beings and creatures, the Zagan scientists have made great strides towards their goals in catering to both the wealthy and the majority, considering the Dimir sausages a possible form of the latter. A spokesperson for the company was sent out to Transylvania to meet with the reclusive family, and though he found them a very "earthy" people, he was able to secure Silviu's recipe. It's not known if they were able to figure out a means of purifying them for human consumption, though the fact that the recipe is also being used for the "Supernaturals As Consumers" program suggests that it's now being marketed to the only customers who can eat it safely: werewolves. Category:Video Game Villains Category:Dark Fantasy Villains Category:Partners in Crime Category:Xenophobes Category:Abusers Category:Genocidal Category:Mentally Ill Category:Dimwits Category:Delusional Category:Hypocrites Category:Gaolers Category:Elderly Category:Poachers Category:Thief Category:The Secret World Villains Category:Fanatics